Berlin film festival 2015: 17 key films to look out for – in pictures

Berlin film festival 2015: 17 key films to look out for – in pictures

The Berlin film festival opens for business on Thursday with a sparkling line-up, including new films from Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog, Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes, and some obscure, little-known film about a student journalist who interviews a rich businessman

Guardian film

Tue 3 Feb 2015 07.46 EST
Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 15.38 EST

Dane DeHaan plays James Dean and Robert Pattinson photographer Dennis Stock in the Anton Corbijn-directed Life, an account of the pair’s friendship

Wim Wenders hooks up with the ubiquitous James Franco for the German director’s first fiction feature since 2008’s Palermo Shooting. Every Thing Will Be Fine is a study of a man (Franco) who knocks down a child in his car

The latest from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has managed to complete three features despite being banned from film-making by Iran’s authorities. Taxi has Panahi himself driving a cab around Tehran, talking to the people he picks up

Having made his name with the low-budget Weekend, British director Andrew Haigh scales up with 45 Years, a study of a long-married couple with explosive secrets. Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling star

Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds star in Woman in Gold, a based-on-truth study of a Holocaust survivor and her lawyer who are fighting to reclaim a Klimt painting after it was stolen by the Nazis. Simon Curtis directs

Léa Seydoux stars in a faithful adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s turn of the century novel Diary of a Chambermaid, previously reworked by Buñuel and Renoir among others. Benoît Jacquot takes the reins this time

Werner Herzog has rounded up a strong cast – James Franco, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Damian Lewis – for Queen of the Desert, a biopic of traveller/diplomat Gertrude Bell, who was instrumental in the creation of Iraq in the 1920s